Benjamin and his daughter Rohini—well, stepdaughter actually—arrived back at the Galle Face Hotel, hot, sweaty, unwashed and exhausted. The dread and horrors of the last few days were receding, but only slowly, and sheer exhaustion was finally taking over.

From his office several days earlier, Ben had watched the suddenly approaching tsunami only through email messages. At first, the local television coverage in his office had told them nothing. As soon as he could, Ben had set off for the south coast of Sri Lanka and collected Rohini from her college on his way through Colombo.

Rohini was just nineteen, and three months earlier had started at a new college just south of Colombo. She’d seen the damage and horrendous effects of the tsunami in Aceh province in Indonesia on her college TV, and then she’d managed to contact Benjamin in his office.

“Daddy,” she’d cried on the telephone, “isn’t Mum in Hambantota today?”

“Yes, I think so, and she—”

“Look on TV!” Rohini screamed.

It had taken Ben several minutes to find out what had happened, and then he’d called Rohini back and told her to be ready for him. He had picked her up as soon as he could get to Colombo.

The road south from Colombo was already packed with vehicles from aid agencies, all on their way to the coast, but getting fewer as they reached their destination. By the time they reached Hambantota, they knew what to expect. They had seen the damage to buildings as they approached Galle, and this wreckage continued as they reached the south coast at Unawatuna. Then the road turned east along the south coast.

“Only the bricks and concrete in each building has remained.” Rohini had been keeping a running commentary.

She continued the horror story. “Doors and windows and the roofs... Cars and boats, and buses have all simply disappeared, and then have been dropped inland as the water recedes. Look over there, telegraph and electric pylons have been flattened, and are now just a twisted mass of metal girders.”

They could see most of the big-leaved shade trees had been flattened at root level, then washed inland with the water, but the palm trees were resilient and still waved their spiky palm leaves into the sky.

When they eventually arrived in Hambantota, they immediately began to look for Nilmini’s office, but that too had disappeared, and as they hunted around, they slowly met some other people they knew and began to realise the worst for Nilmini. Rohini held desperately onto Ben’s arm.